The Tenant - Bharati Mukherjee




When I did my time in the Peace Corps, there was always the knowledge that I could push the eject button and find myself on an airplane headed home to the ‘ol USA.


Now was this knowledge a safety net for me or a hindrance in my development?


I went to Romania by choice. I came back to America by choice.


Did M come back to America by choice, or was it an opportunity too great for her to pass up?


A future in America? A life outside of the crushing existence she could have faced in her hometown. I don’t think I’ll every truly know. The answers to those questions have been buried by our time together here and the life we have made.


I often wonder what life was like for her in those first few months. As open as we were with each other during that period of transition, I’ll never fully know what she went through. What did she think about each morning as she readied herself for work? What thoughts passed as she walked to work, when she had a few moments alone to think?


I believe that most of her time thinking is now dominated by concerns for the boy.


And concerns for our future. How to get me into a job that will propel our lives forward. We are, as most people nowadays, just treading water in our lives. Waiting for the country to get better… and in turn waiting for the chance to move on.


She shares plenty with me and I don’t feel the need to extract any more of her thoughts from her…she is entitled to her private thoughts…but I can’t help but wonder if she still feels like a stranger in this country. She has told me on more than one occasion that she no longer feels any sort of bond with Romania. She has left that country for good. The only tie she has to it is of course through her family.


Through Facebook, I am able to see how some of my former students have fared in their lives. A good number of them have also left Romania and have made their lives abroad. I have placed M’s face over their lives several times and wondered where she would have landed. I’m sure she would have graduated college…but then what? Life as an English teacher? A mother, a wife? Chances are it would have happened at an earlier point in her life than we decided upon. I can find myself building alternative lives for her…for me even. Whole worlds of “what ifs”.


As we have discussed our future recently, one thing that I find myself repeating is the simple thought that the decisions I have made in the past are in fact “in the past” and there isn’t much I can do about it now. We have to live and a opportunities for a simple “but’ and “yet” to slip into our world.


And we need that.

Boxes - Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver – Boxes

Very happy to see this story by Carver included in this volume. The story came along at the right time.

A time for me to recognize my mother a bit more.

As a parent now, I can appreciate the feelings she must have had when I left home. Sure, the feelings I have about the boy are much different than the feelings she had for an 18 year old going off to college.

When I left, It was natural for me to go. I haven’t transitioned, or needed to develop the capacity to have those feelings yet. And furthermore, I am a father and she is a mother. The feelings a mother has for a child are so different than the feelings that a father has for their son or daughter. I’m not saying that one parent loves the child more than the other…they just have different connections. I wrote about that before and I needn’t get into it again.



I can’t imagine how difficult it was for her to see me leave for school. She did have the comfort of knowing that I’d be in a pretty controlled environment.

After college, and not quite knowing about the life I was leading probably caused her to worry a bit more. Sure I was with my father at that point, but I was an adult with the capacity to do adult things…which I naturally did.

And then when I left the country for 2.5 years…well…she just had to accept that I was going to survive off everything that I had learned up to that point. She really had to let go.

Not of her worries of course…she can always worry…but she had to let go of something. What it was, I’m not sure. She did, and she survived my time away. When the decision to return to the States was made, and the decision to return to our city, and to live with her for several months was made, well, she couldn’t have been happier.

We still live in the city I was raised in, and the city where she lives. We are just about one mile apart. I can drive to her house in less than 5 minutes (depending on the sequence of traffic lights) and run there in about 8.

We take the boy over there quite often and she makes every effort she can to be involved in his life. She has bought him countless outfits, toys and more importantly…diapers. Her help is beyond measurement. A few weeks ago when M and I were crippled by a stomach virus, she stepped up to the plate and hit a home run. She was over at our place in minutes ready to take care of the boy while we struggled to survive.

Mom is getting old. She is in a decent house taking care of her husband and attempting to keep the house in order. Bills…maintenance… squirrels in the garage…etc.

The question of what will happen to my mother and the house once my step father passes away has come up with a bit more frequency in the last few years. Will she sell the house? Remain in it alone?

The thought of our little family moving in with her at that point has been floated on more than one occasion by M and I. Even other members of the family have mentioned it as an idea once the time comes.



A decision such as that is a pretty heavy one. One that would involve quite a few gives and takes. Careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages. Thoughts without letting certain emotions enter into the decision making process, and careful negotiations and explanations once the final decision is made. Of course, that’s how I would prefer it to happen. In reality…

Boxes.

Whatever decision is made, someplace within the process, there will be many boxes involved. The physical boxes marked “kitchen”, “bedroom” and “bathroom”. And of course, the boxes of emotion, some with tell-tale markings and some with markings that take a bit of deciphering. The boxes that we have been carrying around our whole lives from one place to another, from one relationship to another.



The attic in my mother’s house has a shit-load of boxes. About 25% of those boxes are mine. 5% of those boxes are pre-marriage…and contain articles from another life. When I was another person. Some date as far back as college. The other boxes were moved there only a couple of years ago. They were placed there in a weekend filled with a flurry of movement as I tried to get the boy’s room ready. Most contain books, papers, the general shit that one accumulates as a married couple and soon loses all importance once a child enters the house. No doubt, I crack open those boxes in a few years. What I’ll do with the contents is unknown. No doubt, I’ll need to crack open the boxes of emotion I hold and what I’ll do with those contents are probably going to cause me to sit a bit…and really think.

Men Under Water – Ralph Lombreglia

Is it better to have dreams and not see them fulfilled... or to not have dreams at all?


I’d like to think that most of us have dreams, but it’s realistic, to accept that there are quite a few living without them.


I consider myself lucky to have dreams but it’s sad as I grow older to see that some of the dreams I had at a younger age are now out of reach. Time simply ran out on me. Or I ran out on my dreams. I have to accept that I simply didn’t work hard enough to achieve that dream and now, it’s too late to call it back. The problem that I face today is that I still have dreams and I am having trouble working towards fulfilling them and I am letting them slip away. I am aware of my mistakes but I’m not doing anything to correct my course. And that’s what is so frustrating about the person that I am. It’s a character flaw that I wish I could correct but…I take no action.


I also need a little realignment because are my dreams really what is important now? I mean…I had my time. I had years. Now I have the boy. It’s all about him. His future. I have dreams for him.


Yes, I know…it’s important not to let my dreams for /of him override his personal dreams. I have to let him be what he’s going to be…through his own doing and pursuit of his dreams. But it will be my duty to assist him in achieving those lofty dreams…and I hope they are just that, lofty.


M, the boy and I were walking the other day and we spotted a former classmate of hers. The classmate was working in a health food store, the same store that he has always worked…at least as long as we have known him…and that’s about 8 years. M said that she felt sad for him and the fact that there he was, years after graduation, still working behind that counter. She knew that he had these dreams of living and teaching in Europe…but nope, still there. And then she turned the light on her and asked herself out loud…”Here I am, who am I to talk”…and when she said this, I think she realized that she was pushing the boy in the stroller and corrected her reality with the acknowledgement that she “had the boy” and she was in a much better “reality” than her classmate.


I’ve often wondered about M’s dreams. I’ve seen he grow through some very developmental stages in her life whereas she missed all of that in me. It hurts me to think that she has wished and dreamed of something that has passed her by…and that she feels she could never again achieve.


We’ve been Under Water on a few occasions but the pool that we shared oxygen in (I am of course referring to a scene in the story) hasn’t been deep enough…or the altered reality hasn’t impressed the change that perhaps we should have recognized.


Personally, I’m at the bottom of a pool right now with that mouth piece firmly between my teeth and I’m sucking down that air as fast as possible. The shift in reality that I have been anticipating is approaching. It’s going to be tough.

Dreams of Distant Lives – Lee K. Abbott

I don’t have the ability to articulate exactly what it is about an author’s writing style which causes me to be attracted to them.


I wonder if it is the subtle foundations they build their story upon. The length of their sentences, the breaths between thoughts - paragraph breaks. These three “things” come immediately to mind. Does that even make sense? Are they really “things”? I don’t even know the right word to describe what they are!


This story made my heart hurt.


It touched nerves in me…perhaps a few raw nerves that I didn’t even know were exposed. This frightens me.


I felt stillness and chaos. This frightened me.


I felt as if I was standing on the edge of my reality, just ready to slip into an altered state…which would become my new normal state…and this frightened me.


This story pulled me into my dreams – my awful dreams – not the dreams that appear at night as I sleep – those are actually very pleasant. The dreams I have during my waking hours are the dreams I am the most afraid of. They are rooted firmly in some aspects of my reality and because of this…they are they most scary. And this is why as I read Abbott’s words, I had a heart ache.


And to push me even further – the narrator of this little short is …39. Yup. How old am I again? Yup. 39.


“My inner life, the world constructed from what I’d been and done, was speaking to me, patiently and calmly. I would hear what it had to say, and I would understand. And so I came to myself, observed the man I am now walk forward to the man I was then and take him, as a father takes his children, into his arms. The one held the other – the future cradling the present- and the one who had been left, the one whose interior hooks and hasps and snaps had come undone, gave himself up utterly. They were both there, in dreamland, under heaven and over hell, two versions of the same man, clasped in an embrace that would end when the world came up again.”


That’s so beautiful…and perfect – for me.

Circle of Prayer – Alice Munro

This was an unfortunate story to have to read over several sittings. I tried…I really did. I looked for assistance online – and I even made efforts to really slow down the pace of my reading in an attempt to digest this story a bit better. I found it difficult to follow and there was nothing that I could really pull from it.


There it is.

The Lie Detector – Madison Smartt Bell

Standing in the shower on morning back in 2008, the idea came to me to start this blog/project. One of many the reasons why I decided to take on this project was that I felt through the stories contained within these anthologies a jumping point for reflection and problem solving. A sentence, a character a theme of a story could send me down paths of exploration that would help me understand my past…or help me with problems I may be going through. The stories could be tools to open my thoughts and feelings. As an added benefit, I’d get a bit of an education - along the way, I’d be exposed some really cool authors. It’s 2012 and in a few months I’ll be into my fourth year in this space. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about my progress at that anniversary date.


Now let’s push forward and see what this next batch of stories brings.


I wrote the above because this particular story triggered a memory of mine dealing with apartments, shady landlords, lack of money and a lack of direction in my life.


I think it was the spring of 1996…or was it early summer? Thankfully, my mind has done a pretty decent job of erasing some unpleasant memories from that time in my life. I quit my job as a chef in a pretty popular restaurant in New Jersey due to the drug habits of a fellow chef. I wasn’t comfortable being associated with his lifestyle. I was living on a futon mattress in the house that my father and step-mother had just moved out of. The place was empty…except for my toiletries and some food in the fridge. Things like kitchen appliances, sofas, all the usual domestic features had been taken out by the movers a few days earlier. It was like I was living in an upscale crack house. Really upscale. So there I was, having just quit my job, needing to find a place to live. For the life of me I can’t remember how I even conducted my apartment hunting.


“So you don’t have a job?”


“No sir.”


“How do you expect to pay rent?”


‘Well, I’m pretty sure I’ll find a job soon and I’ll be able to pay you.”


“Look kid – I don’t think I feel comfortable renting out my place to someone without a job.”


--yeah, no shit – I wouldn’t have rented a place to me either.




The last part of my memory of that period of my life is me on the phone with my sister crying. I was lost. I had no place to go. She begged me to move back to Virginia. I resisted…I couldn’t return home. She offered to come up the next day to get me and my crap. I declined her offer. I was too proud.


Memory cuts to me loading my belongings into a U-Haul.


Something happened. Something right, something good.


I kicked my pride aside and moved back to Virginia. My sister saved me from…I suppose I’ll never know.


I was on the edge, and she pulled me back.


Finally, a sentence at the end of the story really wraps things up for me. It draws the painful past into the present day and forces me to face once again my very uncomfortable situation. One that plagues my thoughts every day of my existence.


“So maybe the lie was out there too, I thought, even if I couldn’t see it. It was just there, floating around with the other particles of the atmosphere, and everybody got a little piece of it, and it didn’t belong to anyone.”


And so here I am today. With these memories – stirred by a short story in The Best American Short Stories 1987. Thanks Madison Smartt Bell. You’re keeping me on my toes.

The Lover of Women – Sue Miller

 Thinking about this blog over the past several weeks and the entries I have completed and those I have yet to write, I realized that I haven’t devoted much time to writing about my mother.  Perhaps I am such that I needn't write about her because there really is nothing to write about and I tend to focus on very emotional subjects and she has not stirred the emotions in me that other subjects I have written about have done.

 Which is not to say that this is a bad thing and I don’t think anything more should be read into it.

 Perhaps there hasn’t been a story that has triggered me to think of her during my writing – until now. 

Funny how that works…isn’t it?

And so, this story comes along, and within it I find the perfect set of stairs to climb into a discussion with myself about my mother.

I really enjoyed this story and it’s one that will hang around with me for some time.  It wasn’t the relationship that the brothers shared or the relationship(s) that the brothers had with the family of sisters, but the relationship that the sons had with their mother.  These sections caused me to think of my mother and the mother son relationship I am seeing M and the boy develop.  A relationship so deep and intense, filled with such love and caring on a level that I will never have with my son -no matter how hard I try.

 

And I am fine with that. 

As a new parent, I think a lot about raising the boy and how much effort it requires to do a really good job at it.  I also think that it is getting easier and will get easier but also I realize that there will be new challenges that arise at each new developmental stage, presenting a whole host of new challenges for M and I and hopefully, over the years we’ll develop the ability to adapt to these changes quickly and deal with them without major disruptions.

  

I am completely clueless as to how my mother raised my sister and me.  As a child, I wasn’t aware of the “raising” that she was doing, or how her actions…or inactions would play out in the years to follow.  I wonder if she realized what would or wouldn’t happen with everything she said or did.  Did she give it that intense of a thought or was she flying by the seat of her pants?  Will I look that deeply into what I say and do as the years go by? 

Does my mother look back on the years she spent raising us and have any regrets?

I can’t imagine that she could have expended so much – and I should say too that I can’t imagine me being able to expend the efforts and energy.

 But I want that to happen!

I know that there was a period of time where all she wanted was for me to open up to her.  I simply couldn’t do what she wanted because I was a moody-self-absorbed teen and young adult.  She wrote me letters pleading with me to share more of my life with her, she asked me repeatedly on our phone conversations (from college or when I lived away from home) to offer her glimpses into my life…and I simply wouldn’t.   As I moved into adulthood, I opened up…slightly, and it took several years of fully being an adult before I could open up – and speak to her as an adult should.

I now know how difficult this must have been for her.  She gave me everything she ever had – tried her hardest and I shut down on her.  She was concerned for my well-being as she said multiple times during those conversations and that concern just didn’t faze me.

 

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t given her in return what she deserves over the years but it’s too late at this point and I can only move forward on our current course (which is a good one) and let our lives play out.

My mother is now a grandmother and she has assumed that role with much success.  She spends too much money on the boy and at times I am concerned that she needs to pull back a little.  She is in a tough space in life being the caregiver for my step-father and she really doesn’t see us or her grandson enough.

I wish her life wasn’t so hard.  She deserves so much more.  These past five years have been incredibly difficult for her and her mental and physical states are suffering.  There is hope that as time passes, that her world will change for the better, after a period of severe sadness that I am sure will come after the passing of her husband.

She will be alone, and it will be the duty, I feel for the children to provide the comfort of a parent, to the parent, as she provided comfort to us during our periods of loss. 

I can only hope that we do a good job – she deserves it.